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To kick things off with an overused phrase: Be careful what
you wish for.

In the case of the Triangle Startup scene, 2014 was a year
that saw huge growth not only in the metros and the general startup communities
that reside therein, but within the startups themselves.

Players that not too long ago were small, self-funded or
seed-funded, one-or-two person shops, all of a sudden started selling product,
raising money, hiring, and expanding.

And even with all the support structure that has risen up
around this solid foundation, finding talent is still nothing short of a
nightmare. In fact, in the last three months of 2014, I got over a dozen pings
from founder friends of mine looking for talent. These were serious,
I’m-ready-to-spend-money now requests, not just the “Hey, if you know anybody
who knows anybody” type.

Let me go back a bit.

Before I ditched my own company to go to work for Automated
Insights, and before ExitEvent was even a thing, I built web-based
data-intensive applications for Fortune 500 corporations as well as a handful
of startups. Those startups were more an outgrowth of the business, not a
foundation, and those projects were usually filled not by my employees, but by
trusted startup friends of mine who had extra cycles.

In fact, in the last year of my company, we started
marketing an oDesk type of solution – we had really bright startup people who
had time, you have startup needs that don’t require a full time presence.

This worked very well. BoostSuite, WedPics, and Automated
Insights (of course) were among those startups who hired startup-minded people
to advance their startups. The majority of those, as I wound the company down,
turned into full time hires and most of those are still in place today.

Four years later, I still get the occasional request for
helping land talent from founders who either know me or were sent to me by
friends. I still help when I can, only now it’s not so much a contract sense as
it is a vouching sense. As time went on, these request trickled down to one a
month or so.

However, as 2014 went on, the trickle turned back into a
gusher. But the requests were of a
different nature this time around, and it reflects the growth that the Triangle
has experienced this year. These to major differences tell the story:

Prior to 2014, the universities, the coding schools, and poaching
from local large companies had produced a pool of talent that local startups
could feel very good about hiring and molding into the exact kind of employee
they needed. Note: This was true everywhere except in tech, where molding fresh
talent is admittedly a lot harder.

Today’s startup has more capital to work with and more on
the line. They’re looking for the best and brightest, and when they get to me,
they’ve usually gone the local routes and come up short. The problem today is
that the best and brightest are already working for someone else, and that
someone else has enough work to keep them busy 60 hours a week and satisfied
enough to keep them from jumping ship.

2)It’s no longer just tech, brilliant sales,
marketing, project management, and management are also getting impossible to
find.

The noticeable shift for me towards the end of 2014 was that
the requests weren’t just for Ruby folks, or Android/iOS folks, or backend
folks. I had a handful of requests for data folks, more than one for sales
folks, and even one for a sharp marketing person with a track record.

Startup management needs are shifting too It’s gone beyond
the ability to make sure people show up and document their code. Today’s
Triangle Startup management needs to be able to wear all the hats, have
produced in what’s now a definitive startup environment here, and is going to
not just work startup hours, but also do startup tasks. That means if you’re a
technology manager, you’re going to have to code.

The good news is that not only is startup here growing at a
still-ridiculous clip, it’s evolving as well, and the requirements are becoming
broader. The bad news is that while the talent pool is catching up, it’s still lagging.
But this time the lag is less in depth, and more in breadth.

To coin another overused phrase: It's a good problem to have.

For now.

Joe Procopio

Founder and Advisor

Joe Procopio is the founder of ExitEvent and remains an advisor after its acquisition by American Underground in 2013. He’s currently the Chief Product Officer at Automated Insights. Joe is a serial entrepreneur, investor, mentor and writer. Everything you need to know about him can be found at http://joeprocopio.com or by following him at @jproco.